Chris Worfolk's Blog

I’ve launched a new course on creating Facebook ads. Here is the blurb:

Do you want to master Facebook Ads? Maybe you’re an entrepreneur or small business owner looking to reach new customers. A marketer looking for new audiences. Or maybe you’re new to digital marketing and want to find out what it can do for you.

This is a complete beginner to advanced course: we’ll cover the basics from setting up your account and creating your first campaign to advanced topics like split testing, retargeting and instant experiences.

It’s a big course: three and a half hours of full HD video showing you exactly how to create ads as you follow my screen.

The triathlon season is here! After a long wait, Skipton finally arrived. Last year I went to Skipton to do my first ever triathlon. This year I was coming as a seasoned veteran. Because I’m old, but also because I spent all of last year racing.

It was April, so it was freezing. As I stripped off in the transition area and headed to the pool, I was biting myself with the cold. Luckily, the pool was a lovely 28 degrees (like bath water) and the rest of the race was fine if a little windy.

I brought it home in just under 90 minutes, comfortably beating last year’s time.

My veteran status showed in the swim: I remembered my goggles this time! I completed it in just over nine minutes, which is a fast 400 metres for me. After that, it was overtaking people all the way, which is one of the best bits of being such a slow swimmer.

The bike segment was where I picked up most of my time, but it was a tough ride. It was in a tonne of lower back pain to the point where I almost had to stop and get off. However, I managed to stretch a bit on the bike and bear with it until I could get back to T2 and onto the run.

It was lovely to be racing with Hyde Park Harriers. Having friendly faces to chat to before and after the race made it feel like a real community event and their cheering on was much appreciated. Unfortunately, I missed the group photo as Venla was a bit bored by this point.

Garmin Edge computers come with a feature called “Extended Display Mode” that allows you to relay your Forerunner watch data through your bike computer. This sounds super handy for triathlon because you will be tracking the activity through your watch, so relaying the data you are already capturing makes a lot of sense.

In reality, though, it’s not a particularly useful feature.

The data screens are driven by the watch. That means that you can only have a few fields on there. I like to have a tonne of stuff on my display, and at very least I would like to see my speed, power, heart rate and cadence. So, I think I’ll be sticking with running them independently for now.

Yesterday I wrote about the duathlon I took part in at the Brownlee Centre. I recorded the bike section on my action camera and I have overlayed my speed, power and heart rate onto the video. It’s predictably dull, but I have added some commentary over the top to make it less dull lol. In my defence, this isn’t why I bought an action camera.

The hyper smooth video does a good job, although I find it a bit weird. The background stays fixed in position as everything else dances around. It looks a bit unnatural but does produce something that is easy to watch.

The triathlon season is almost upon us! Skipton is but three weeks away and the World Series has already kicked off in warmer climates. In preparation, Leeds Bradford Triathlon Club hosted a duathlon event at the Brownlee Centre that was upon to other clubs.

Myself, Jack, Graeme and Naomi took part from Hyde Park Harriers. Everyone else has a club tri suit but I did at least manage to full on my HPH hoodie before we took the group photo.

The course was roughly a 4.5km run, 10km bike and final 1.5km run. I clocked in with a time of:

47:30

I was pretty happy with that. It represents a pace of under five minutes per kilometre in the run and an average speed of just under 30 kph on the bike. It would have been nice to be faster on the bike, but the course has its technical bits (for a rider of my skills, lol) and I wasn’t pushing everything I had, so I’ll take it.

Venla is at the stage where she can go all day without a nap but is very cranky towards the end if she does. Sometimes she has one, sometimes she doesn’t. This means she often gets home from daycare very tried and sometimes has a nap out of sheer exhaustion.

For example, here is a nap she had while standing up.

Another time, I allowed her to have a 30-minute nap on the sofa. But then I needed here awake so she didn’t wake up too early the next morning. So, I picked her up and sat her next to the kitchen where I was making dinner. She went to sleep anyway.

To celebrate Elina’s birthday earlier this month, we went to Kitty Cafe.

It’s not like a normal cafe. You need to book in advance and you pay for a one hour slot. You then buy your food and drink on top of that. We both had pizza. It was equivalent to what you can buy from the supermarket and cook at home, which is the level I was expected. But you’re not really there for the food.

There were a bunch of cats. Sometimes we had to go on a hunt for them, and Venla enjoyed running around trying to spot them. None of them came over for a stroke or a play. But who could blame them when they’ve spent an entire day with children running around after them trying to wave string in their faces.

At first glance, you may not realise the Mavic Crossride are bike shoes. They look like trainers. But, hidden beneath the bright yellow sole is an inset SPD cleat (mountain bike cleat) that allows you to ride clipless while wearing a really comfortable shoe.

In this video, I’ll review the shoes and show you what they look like while cycling.

They’re not trainers, as you figure out when you put them on. The rubber sole is big and chunky and takes out a lot of the flex. They suggest you could go hiking in them, and that’s true, but you couldn’t go running in them because the sole is too thick and because the metal cleat does make contact with the ground. It doesn’t leave you walking like a duck but you can hear the clink.

Making them more comfortable and a little more flexible also means that they are not as stiff as road shoes. But that is the standard trade-off with mountain bike shoes.

The upper comes with both laces and a velcro strap. I tend to tie the laces in a single knot and then use the velcro strap to do the final tightening, which is easy to re-do later if it turns out you tied them a little loser than you would like.

The Hero 7 Black is the late-2018 offering from GoPro. This little action camera comes with an upgraded stabilisation called “hyper smooth”. Why it doesn’t come with the other cameras is less clear because there is no hardware behind, save perhaps some CPU, as it is all done by the software.

In this video, I’ll unbox the camera and go through the accessories it comes with. Ordering direct from GoPro will get you a beanie hat and an SD card, but is slower and a little more expensive than other retailers such as Amazon.

I’ll also show you the 3.5mm microphone adapter that allows you to plug in an external microphone into your GoPro. This is essential if you want to get good sound quality. On-camera microphones are never great at the best of times, and as the GoPro has been waterproof since the 5, completely sealing the unit has only made it worse.

Finally, I’ll take it outside to show you what the hyper smooth stabilisation looks like when moving around with it on a monopod.